


tried to swim and stay afloat

by bloodredcherries



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Gen, mentioned FP Jones II/Alice Cooper, mentioned FP Jones II/Gladys Jones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 10:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18207119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodredcherries/pseuds/bloodredcherries
Summary: FP groaned. Alice was going to beat him into a pulp when she snapped out of whatever she was currently into and realized that her child was living in sin in a den of serpents. What the hell were Betty and the boy thinking? It was clear to him that they weren’t.





	tried to swim and stay afloat

FP Jones prided himself on being an observant man. Sure, he may have been a bit rough around the edges, and he may have only gotten his shiny new job on the Northside, and his shiny new house on the Northside, through less than scrupulous means, but, dammit, he had  _ some  _ observational skills. He’d had to, after all, being in the Army, and then in various stints at various jobs along the way, mainly on the quasi-legal side of things, but even there he’d needed observation skills. Being a gang leader was a tough job, especially when there were people who made him exert effort in keeping them in line. He’d probably given the reigns to Jughead too early, but he’d been tired. He was still tired. 

 

Gladys was back in town and he  _ knew _ that she was up to no good, what with her being able to buy Alice’s house in cash and the fact that she was  _ never _ up to any damn good and could never stand him but suddenly wanted to play at happy families? It was such bullshit. He’d gone through the motions at that party (Gladys had never actually bothered to figure out his age throughout their years of being tied together) and the enforced proximity of the woman (and her inability to act anything close to normal ever) had forced him to see her in an even less flattering light than he’d done prior, which was definitely saying something. It said nothing good. 

 

FP was now concerned that the Farm was some sort of cult. He really hadn’t believed the rumors that he had heard on the subject prior to the evening of the play -- teenagers did stupid shit all the time and if the Farm meant that Alice actually wanted to give him the time of day and was willing to be intimate with him who was he to have not encouraged that -- but was now coming to regret not following up on all of those comments that he had heard Betty and Jughead make about Alice’s descent into less than sane behavior and life choices. He had thought that the twosome had figured out about their relationship and thought that Alice was crazy for settling for a guy like him. 

 

That clapping had freaked him out. 

 

Heathers had been an inappropriate show to bring his 11 year old to.

 

It was strange how the anonymous person who had reported the burned out trailer had sounded exactly like his wife. 

 

These were all facts that FP had forced himself to process and discover over the course of a weekend. 

 

He had attempted to speak to Alice during the second performance of the musical, but she had taken one look at him and disappeared (at least, that was how it seemed), and she was contently ignoring his attempts to contact her. 

 

He supposed that was his fault. He couldn’t blame Alice for being upset about how he’d ended things. He had been expecting her to bring up the fact that she had also had his child, and when she hadn’t, he’d felt stuck. 

 

Which, of course, had brought him to today. 

 

“Why is Jughead’s girlfriend living here?” 

 

“I’m sorry? What are you talking about?” 

 

JB rolled her eyes, and she reached past him to grab a mug for her coffee. “The blonde girl that used to live here, your friend’s daughter. She’s Jughead’s girlfriend, right?” 

 

“She’s not my friend,” FP said in defense. “She’s just someone I know.”

 

“Right.” JB’s tone was one of disbelief. “Look, Dad, I don’t care what she is to you, will you just answer my question? I heard her voice when we showed up. Why do you think I went off to explore the house?”   
  


“Betty’s Jughead’s girlfriend, yeah, you’re right. I was asking more why do you think she’s living here.” 

 

“Uh, because she is? This morning she made us breakfast? In her pajamas?”

 

FP blinked. “That was Betty? I thought that was your mother.” 

 

“Mom’s all pissed off about something,” JB said, her tone breezy. “Plus it was edible, Dad. Do you really think that was the result of Mom cooking?” 

 

FP had eaten breakfast with JB and promptly fallen asleep on the bed that was in the finished basement. It seemed wrong to share Alice’s bed with Gladys. He knew that Gladys was his wife and that it  _ shouldn’t _ have been weird to him, but maintaining separate living spaces even in the house was entirely acceptable by him. That had pissed Gladys off, but he had used the excuse of the odd hours that the job afforded him. He hadn’t wanted to admit the truth: that it was fucking weird that he was living in Alice’s house with someone who wasn’t Alice. He only came up to the first floor when the kids were there. 

 

Betty had tended to be there, of course, but he had brushed it off as her being present to see Jughead. It made sense in his mind for Betty (being Jughead’s girlfriend) to do things with his family. He’d assumed that she wanted to be there to get to know JB, and possibly Gladys. And, being a teenager, he suspected her omni-presence was partly designed to annoy the living hell out of Alice. He’d never thought that she hadn’t moved out. 

 

“You’re absolutely sure?” 

 

“Seems like a stupid thing to lie to you about.” FP didn’t really get JB. She had changed so much since she’d been taken to Toledo. The fact that she suddenly liked him was vaguely suspicious, but he was just too happy to have his daughter back to question her on it. Even though the older she got the less she looked like him. What did he know about that shit? He’d knocked Alice up at 17. Maybe kids didn’t have to look like their dads. “Why don’t you ask her?”

 

“I thought your brother went out.” FP vaguely recalled Jughead telling him that, and standing there prattling on for several minutes while he tried to go back to sleep. “Why would Betty still be here...unless…”

 

“She lives here, Dad.” 

 

FP groaned. Alice was going to beat him into a pulp when she snapped out of whatever she was currently into and realized that her child was living in sin in a den of serpents. What the hell were Betty and the boy thinking? It was clear to him that they weren’t.   
  


“I’ll go talk to her,” he sighed. “Thanks, kid.” He stood from the kitchen table, and impulsively leaned over and kissed the top of JB’s head. “Don’t be drinking too much more of that coffee, you hear?” He didn’t want her drinking it at all, but in his list of battles he needed to fight, coffee was low on his list. 

 

He contemplated changing out of the t-shirt and sweatpants he had on into something else, but decided against it. There was no way he was going to put off the conversation with Betty. It needed to be had, whether either party wanted it to or not. He poured himself another cup of coffee, and headed up the stairs. 

 

It was fucking weird being in the house without Alice. He hated it. He hated Gladys’s little touches even more. When he had said he wanted to live on the Northside, he hadn’t meant it like this. 

 

Still, he needed to talk to Betty, so he pushed past his feelings of regret, and knocked on her -- or rather, he’d assumed Jughead’s -- bedroom door. 

  
  


***

  
  


FP didn’t care if Betty was living with them -- he knew that as a parent he probably should have mustered up a token protest or two, but he knew how devoted Betty was to her mother, and suspected she had a good reason -- he was just more than a bit perturbed he had been so dedicated to avoiding the house that his  _ eleven _ year old had noticed before him. 

 

“I think it’s fair to say that we need to talk,” he said, once Betty had opened the door. “I’m not mad, Betty, I just...think the time has passed for me to know what I’m dealing with here.” 

 

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Betty told him. “Jughead said I could stay.” 

 

“Yeah, but, what are you doing here? Don’t you want to go with your mother, and get away from this place? You did nearly die here.” 

 

Betty eyed him warily. “Did she leave the farm? Do you know?”

 

“What does that have to do with you living here?” FP demanded. “Look, Betty, I’ll be honest with you. I’ve heard what you and Jughead said about your mother, and I don’t know what to believe. You say that she’s acting like she’s possessed and that she’s lost her mind, but she hasn’t been like that with me.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Is there something I’m missing?” 

 

“That’s what Mrs. Lodge said, too,” she muttered. “I don’t get it. Why does she act so strange when she’s around Polly, but not around any of you? Shouldn’t she be trying to convert all of you?” 

 

“Convert us into what?” 

 

“Joining that stupid farm,” Betty snapped. “It’s a cult, Mr. Jones, and they’ve conned my mother into joining because she’s some sort of local celebrity, and Polly has convinced her that joining the farm will make her forget about all of the things that happened to her, like my dad trying to kill her, and Chic killing that man.” She shook her head. “And I want to expose them but they’re blackmailing me. They convinced her to tell her all of her secrets, and I don’t think that she meant to tell them to them, but I’m afraid that they’ll hold them over her.” 

 

“It’s not just my mom,” she continued. “Evelyn has convinced so many people to join. She convinced Kevin and Fangs, too.” 

 

“It’s okay, Betty,” he whispered. “Take a deep breath. It’s going to be okay.” 

 

“How do you know that?” Betty demanded. “I’m pretty sure that they’re all on drugs,” she continued. “When we had our cast party at the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, everyone else acted like how Mom said you guys acted on Ascension Night. Except me. I didn’t take anything there.”

 

“I’m gonna figure something out, okay?” 

 

“How? What can you even do? It’s all conjecture, isn’t it? My word against theirs?” She sniffled loudly. “The only thing I can think of is my mom’s Baptism.” 

 

“What do you mean, Baptism?” 

 

“That’s what they call it,” she whispered. “Polly deliberately drowned her -- I witnessed it -- she wasn’t breathing, and I had to give her CPR. I should have called you but I  _ panicked _ and I didn’t know what to do, and when the ambulance came and took her to the hospital they said that if I hadn’t been there she would have died. I can’t stay there, Mr. Jones. Please don’t make me.”

 

“It’s okay, Betty,” he said. “I’m sure as hell not letting you stay there. You can stay here. Even if no one bothered to tell me. And, we’re gonna get your mother out of there, okay?” 

 

“There’s something else you need to know,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it here, though. Can we talk about it at your office?”

 

“Yeah, sure,” FP agreed. “I’ll just tell JB we’re gonna go, and get changed. She can stay here until Gladys comes.” 

 

“No. She can’t. Have her go over to Fred’s. Trust me.” 

 

FP hesitated, before he nodded decisively. “Yeah, okay, I’ll send her to Fred’s.” Fred was a good guy. He knew he’d take care of JB. “You know that I care about you, right, Betty? You’re like a daughter to me. I wish you had told me this earlier. Maybe things could have been different.” 

 

“I know, Mr. Jones, I thought I could handle it on my own.” 

 

“Betty, what Polly did is a class B felony in the state of New York. I’m going to have to arrest her.” 

 

“I don’t care what you do to her,” she said. “Arrest her, don’t arrest her, I just want my mom back.”

  
  


***

  
  


“You’re telling me that Gladys is the fizzle rocks dealer?” FP asked her, as Betty had blurted that out the literal second that they’d been in the patrol car, safe from JB’s listening ears. “I wish I could say that I was stunned by this.” 

 

“The fire at the trailer, it wasn’t an accident,” she added, her gaze low. “I’m sorry. I told Jughead that it would shut her down. I just panicked and I wanted to fix things without you losing your wife.” 

 

“You think I care about Gladys?” 

 

“Don’t you?” 

 

“Betty, I’m living in your father’s mancave because I can’t stand the sight of her. JB had to  _ tell  _ me you were living here, because I sure as fuck didn’t know. Gladys and I...we were stupid. We screwed around and we weren’t safe and when I found out she was pregnant with Jughead I did the proper thing and married her. I didn’t want him to be like me, okay? I don’t want either of them to have the life that I had growing up.”

 

“I think that she’s abusing them,” she added. 

 

“Why do you say that?” 

 

“She pulled a knife on Jughead earlier today while you were asleep after your overnight shift. JB wanted to wake you but Juggie said not to. That it wasn’t anything he wasn’t used to with her. FP, she said that she had made it look like an accident when she’d done away with Penny, and that he couldn’t stand in her way anymore.” 

 

“Fuck.” 

 

“Jughead and Sweet Pea are trailing her,” she added. “They said that she’s at the farm.” 

 

“Well,” he said. “Sounds like I’m  _ also _ going to the farm. Me and my deputies. You want to come along?” 

 

FP was very much done with this entire situation. He didn’t even care if arresting Gladys cost him Jellybean. He sure as hell was done with her, and he was done with the manipulators at the farm trying to con Alice (and all those other morons he’d seen at the musical) into joining their ranks by dosing them with who even knew what. Including Fangs and Keller. It was absolutely ridiculous. 

 

Not to mention all that money that Polly and Jason’s idiocy had cost the Serpents. 

 

If he had known that Alice’s daughter was crazy as all hell, he would not have offered the two of them that deal. FP was not remorseful about Jason’s death. He only regretted the fact that arresting Polly would lead to a detoxing Alice taking custody of her daughter’s children. 

 

As far as he was concerned, Gladys deserved what she got. He was done pretending that there was any affection between the two of them. Dealing drugs was bad enough, but he couldn’t abide by her  _ knifing _ Jughead. 

 

“I’ll come, but, can I just stay in the patrol car?” 

 

“I’m not letting you get involved.” 

 

“Am I going to get in trouble for burning the trailer down?” 

 

FP slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Betty. It’s okay. You’re good.”

  
  



End file.
